I was, until recently, Economics Editor of The Telegraph. You can find my book - 50 Economics Ideas You Really Need to Know - here.

The 2000s depression in one picture

Cut out and keep this chart to show to anyone who tries to persuade you that this recession is really no worse than the one in the early 1990s, or for that matter the 1980s. An earlier version featured in my blog from this morning, but the good people at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research have now updated it in the light of today's GDP numbers.

click on this for a bigger version

The numbers along the x axis represent the numbers of months we are out from the peak for GDP, while the vertical axis represents where the economy is at that point in relation to the peak. In other words, as things currently stand we're just about 6pc lower than the peak for the economy (in 2008), which is more or less where the UK was in 1931.

The difference this time around, of course, is that rather more has been done in the way of interest rate cuts and monetary easing than in the 1930s. However, on the flip side, lest we forget there was a competitive devaluation of around 25pc in the early 1930s when the UK left the Gold Standard; moreover the sheer power of the UK financial crisis this time around has been far, far greater. Not one British bank collapsed in the 1930s.

So quite whether you think the future is any brighter than it was for our forefathers is still a matter for debate. What isn't is that we are tracking the Great Depression.

For an interesting international comparison piece to NIESR's work, check out this excellent piece of work by Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke. Green shoots or not, we must be under no delusions as to the scale of this economic crisis.